Poker Night 2

Before we beginI never entirely expected to get this, it just sort of happened. Basically what happened was that recently I'd been on a road trip and visited a casino for the first time along the way, but I deliberately never visited the poker table - knowing full well I'd lose quickly.

Then I saw this on offer on Steam, and kind of missed not playing at least a bit of poker - and while it's not a great substitute for being at a real table with real people, at least this way I wouldn't lose real cash in a hurry.

It's Telltale Games, of which I own a number of other games (like Tales of Monkey Island and the rebooted Sam & Max games) and figured it couldn't be terrible, so I picked it up.

Then I realised the true nature of this game... wow.

Playing the gameSo the game opens with you getting out of a car with what looks suspiciously like General Skun-ka'pe (Sam & Max season 3) and walking through a back alley to a door marked The Inventory, and after walking down some corridors, you meet a familiar face - Brock Sampson of the Venture Brothers.

Brock takes you to the poker room where you meet the... I guess he is effectively the pit boss? Anyway, you meet Commodore Reginald Van Winslow (retired) (Tales of Monkey Island) who provides some direction in terms of making sure everyone puts their buy-in down on the table.

The rest of the players get introduced too... Sam (Sam & Max, although Max is in the room, he's not playing), Claptrap (Borderlands) and Ash (Army of Darkness)

To put you in perspective of where this game is going, even before the game directly introduces Claptrap to you, he's approached the bar and said "But seriously, whose HDMI port do I have to kiss to get a drink around here?" That's the tone this game is going for.

From there, once everyone's at the table, it's a fairly straight forward game of poker - there are two choices, Texas Hold'em or Omaha Hold'em. I don't know if you're familiar with the rules of poker, but here's the short version.

In both versions, essentially you're betting on the cards in your hand plus the cards on the table, as to who has the best hand. For a given hand, the first two players put in a bet (called the blind) before any cards are given, then you get your cards.

Once you've gotten your cards, you can either fold (leave the hand), call (keep yourself in the hand by matching the bets already out) or raise (put more money in because you believe, or want to bluff the others into thinking that you have a better hand). Then this goes around the table, then three cards are dealt, followed by another round of fold/call/raise then another card, then another round of bets and finally the fifth card on the table.

If there's only one player left in the game at any point in this cycle, they claim the pot of everyone's bets for that hand. Otherwise it goes down to a showdown of sorts based on what hands everyone has - at that point it's simply whoever has the best hand based on what they have plus what cards are on the table. It's a bit much to explain in depth) what all the different hands are but roughly explained, you pull the best 5 cards you can out of it, arranged in order of having a pair, two pairs, three of a kind, a straight (5 cards in numeric order), a flush (5 cards all the same suit), a straight flush (5 cards in numeric order, all the same suit), four of a kind and a royal flush (A, K, Q, J, 10 all of the same suit)

Texas Hold'em is where you have two cards in your hand, 5 on the table and you simply make the best 5 cards you can out of it. Omaha Hold'em is similar but you have 4 cards in your hand, 5 on the table and you have to use 2 from your hand, 3 from the table to make your best hand.

Mechanically, that's all the game is. A simple enough game well executed. The interface is pretty straightforward and easy enough to follow.

So Ash and Sam had to put in a bet themselves before even seeing their cards (Ash $400 in, Sam taking that $400 and adding a further $400, making the stock bet $800)... now everyone gets their two cards. (This is Texas Hold'em)

Now, I can choose whether I want to fold and just go out at this point before I put any money in, or I can put in $800 to stay in the hand or I can add more money to the pot. 10/3 isn't a great combination and the smart thing to do would probably be to fold but let's stay in and see what happens.

Oh, I forgot to mention the dealer. The dealer for this game is GLaDOS. Yes. All the cards are dealt mechanically.

Hmm, so there's my two cards, plus three on the table (two more to come)... and I have precisely nothing in my hand right now. That's not entirely true, I have Ace-High meaning that any hand, even a pair, will beat it but if no-one else has even a pair, they need to have an Ace to beat it. Not a great hand at all.

The rest of the players do their thing - Claptrap folds, Sam adds another $2400 to the pot. Now, since I don't have anything in my hand, staying in the game at this point means I'm essentially either betting money in the hopes of getting a good card, or I'm betting to pretend that I have a great hand and hoping the others fall for it (the bluff) and fold, but given that Sam raised... I get the feeling he's got something and that beats my nothing. So fold it is.

Yes, GLaDOS actually says that... "If I had your brain, I'd fold too." And it goes around the table a little more before Sam wins the hand.

So, another hand, another round of betting. And then we get into the banter.

And so the game continues. It's a poker game, sure, but the real fun of it is in the banter like this. I'll talk more about that in a bit.

Once you've completed a few rounds, the game changes it up a little; initially, the opening bets are $400 and $800 for the first and second players who bet without seeing cards, but later on it's changed up to $600/$1200 and even $800/$1200. That way a given tournament (all five players at once) won't go on too long because eventually bet attrition will cause a player to go out eventually anyway, as well as the fact that the first/second players who bet blind rotate through the group, so even a player who just folds every time is eventually going to go broke.

After that, Reginald Winslow informs you that you have won some tokens, which lead to other interesting things.

Firstly, unlocks. Tokens get used to unlock different styles of cards/chips/felts, which can lead to different banter. There's six styles of each - the Inventory (the club where you're playing), Borderlands, Sam & Max, Venture Brothers, Evil Dead and Portal, each of which is progressively more expensive. There are also some interesting twists if you unlock and subsequently use a set of three from the same thing together (e.g. using the Sam & Max cards, chips and felt together) but I'll leave you to see that.

Secondly, there are bounties. Specifically, each character has a bounty that can be won from them, like Sam's banjo or Ash's copy of the Necronomicon.

Before you can play for a bounty, you must complete three challenges. These vary in a lot of ways but there are always three. Complete the three and the next tournament has a character's bounty as a side prize.

There is a third way to use the tokens, to buy drinks, but I've only seen the option turn up once and I don't know how to trigger it. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, I don't know.

And on that bombshellThere's really only so much you can do with a poker game. It's poker, after all. But you wouldn't play this game to play poker as such because that's not where the real entertainment value is.

It's in the banter, in the witticisms and carefully put together dialogue between the characters. Like the time there were 4 cards of a straight on the table and I had the fifth card in my hand and GLaDOS told me how impressive it was I had managed to convert an almost unbeatable hand into a victory.

Even after a few hours of playing I'm still hearing new dialogue - sure, there's plenty of repeats too - but I'm hearing conversations I haven't heard before and it's fantastic. And hilarious, too.

The extra stuff around the unlocks and bounties is icing on the cake, it means there is something mechanical other than the gameplay and gives you something interesting to work with in terms of focus for your efforts.

Ultimately it's the guest-star factor that you'll be playing this game for, seeing characters from various places amuse you. It's on Steam for both Windows and OS X for the princely sum of $5 and unless you really hate poker, or you have no connection to any of the characters at all, give it a whirl. Heck, even if you have no connection to any of the characters at all, it's probably cheap enough to give it a whirl anyway and you might find you like the attitude of at least one of the characters enough to explore their origins. (Whatever those origins are, be they Ash and the Army of Darkness, or Sam & Max's games, or the Venture Bros series or Borderlands... or Portal. We can't forget GLaDOS.)

For the meta gaming fans, it's possible to unlock Borderlands 2 content and (for the Steam version), Team Fortress 2 items. (Poker Night 2 is available on XBox Live Arcade, where you can unlock Avatar Items, and on PS3 where you can unlock PS themes. Also apparently coming soon to mobile devices.)

There is a second game from Telltale, Poker Night at the Inventory... well, technically it's the first game as this is Poker Night 2... the premise is the same, but the cast is different - the first game has Tycho (Penny Arcade), Max (Sam & Max), the Heavy Weapons Guy (Team Fortress 2) and Strong Bad (Homestar Runner)... I dunno, I can't help but feel that the cast in Poker Night 2 is probably stronger.

Whatever, I think most people would probably enjoy this if only for the humour factor.